Excerpts: The global rate of innovation today, which is running at seven "important technological developments" per billion people per year, matches the rate in 1600. Despite far higher standards of education and massive R&D funding "it is more difficult now for people to develop new technology", Huebner says. Extrapolating Huebner's global innovation curve just two decades into the future, the innovation rate plummets to medieval levels. "We are approaching the 'dark ages point', when the rate of innovation is the same as it was during the Dark Ages," Huebner says. "We'll reach that in 2024."

Is It Human Or Computer? Defending E-Commerce With Captchas, IT Professional

Abstract: A Captcha-a completely automatic public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart-is a test that humans can pass but computer programs cannot; such tests are becoming key to defending e-commerce systems. By using a Captcha, for example, IT systems can permit only real people-rather than a spammer's script-to create a free e-mail account. This article explains the various types of Captchas and discusses their strengths and weaknesses as a security measure. It also lists sources for more information on the formal research into Captchas.

Excerpt: Morton Andreas Meyer, Norway's Minister for Modernisation, has announced that the Norwegian government will no longer accept the use of proprietary formats. (...) "Proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government," he said. Although Meyer did not mention Microsoft by name, he did say that his presentation at the eNorge 2009 conference would be his last time using Windows Media Player on the Internet, a clear warning shot for the US-based software giant.

Excerpts: (...) given this rapid development along several different fronts, the possibility of technology growing beyond human control must now be taken seriously, according to a new report. (...) "Future synergies among nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science can dramatically improve the human condition by increasing the availability of food, energy and water and by connecting people and information anywhere. The effect will be to increase collective intelligence and create value and efficiency while lowering costs." However, it warns that "(...) unfortunately it is not increasingly clear how much wisdom, goodwill and intelligence will be focussed on these challenges."

Excerpts: (...) idea of using laser pulses to force the interaction of photons, which can contain quantum information.

(...) optical quantum computing schemes are not regarded as the most practical alternatives." Most researchers in the field say that the leading candidate among the competing technologies for creating workable quantum computers is based on trapped ions, (...).

(...) Darpa had considered financing an ambitious "moon shot" program for quantum computing research, but scaled back that program after some researchers warned that there was a high likelihood of failure.

Excerpts: The problem with today's internet, according to Clark, is that its 30-year-old design, which allowed for the development of exciting new applications (the world wide web, e-commerce, file sharing, you name it), is now stifling further growth.

A new architecture could allow for ubiquitous embedded wireless communications devices and sensors. It could also provide for more secure and convenient forms of commerce. (...)

"Look at phishing and spam, and zombies, and all this crap," said Clark. "Show me how six incremental changes are going to make them go away."

Excerpts: The economic miracle that is transforming the world's most populous nation is threatened by energy shortages and rising pollution. It also risks plunging the planet's climate into chaos. Peter Aldhous reports. China is booming, and its hunger for energy is insatiable. For its people, the dismal air quality across much of the country is a constant reminder of its reliance on coal and other dirty fuels

Excerpts: Along with its fast economic growth, China has embraced a national strategy for rejuvenating the country through education and science and technology. This strategy attaches importance to both fundamental research and the development of technologies that are critical to social and economic development. Among the fields that have enjoyed particularly rapid development in China in the past decade are nanoscience and nanotechnology. These terms refer to the growing knowledge base and technical framework for understanding and manipulating matter on nanometer scales ranging from the atomic to the cellular.

Changes And Continuities. Evolution Of A Chinese Family Business, Asia Europe J.

Excerpts: Starting from the early nineteenth century, western colonial activities have opened up a large area of Southeast Asia for economic penetration. Chinese family business, with its extensive familial and cultural networks, has a niche in these frontier areas where economic and legal institutions were embryonic or ineffective. In Southeast Asia, Chinese extended families are often geographically dispersed (...) built up a mechanism to enforce business obligations cross borders. (...) It helps to explain why the Overseas Chinese communities, over the centuries, have played an important part in the ties which China has forged with its neighbouring regions in Asia. (...)

Abstract: Modern Dance was introduced into Western civilization around the thirties. What happened in the East? This article ponders the present situation of choreographic modernity in East Asia, tracing its historical and social evolution. An individual approach to each East Asian country is made, trying to find some common denominators for the whole region. The concepts of Asian time, space and body are, as well, analysed, so as to elucidate if globalisation will make modern dance to become a global cultural product in which East and West can have a balanced, creative participation.

Materials and methods. The experiment was performed within a sound- and light-insulated chamber of 1.5 104 cubic meters tapering to a stage. (...)

Results. Upon seeing the first sortie of dancers flit across the stage in head-to-toe, frilly white frocks, this observer mistook them for Woody Allen-esque spermatozoa. Although the dancers were adorably capricious, it was only with post hoc explanation that I realized that they represented pollen grains undergoing Brownian motion due to molecular collisions.

Excerpts: Neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behaviour generally posits that brain mechanisms will ultimately suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and (...) can therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these elements. Thus, terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or experiential content (e.g. 'feeling', 'knowing' and 'effort') are not included as primary causal factors. (...) Contemporary physical theory brings directly and irreducibly into the overall causal structure certain psychologically described choices made by human agents about how they will act. (...)

Excerpts: Many studies assume that an increase in brain size is beneficial. However, the costs of producing and maintaining a brain are high, and we argue that brain size should be secondarily reduced by natural selection whenever the costs outweigh the benefits. Our results confirm this by showing that brain size is subject to bidirectional selection. Relative to the ancestral state, brain size in bats has been reduced in fast flyers, while it has increased in manoeuvrable flyers adapted to flight in complex habitats. This study emphasizes that brain reduction and enlargement are equally important, (...)

New Cornell Study Suggests That Mental Processing Is Continuous, Not Like A Computer, Cornell News Release

Excerpts:

Kevin Stearns/University Photography Cornell psycholinguist Michael Spivey asks Florencia Reali to listen for a word and then click on its picture. By studying the curvature of the trajectory of the mouse, he can analyze language comprehension processes. Copyright ? Cornell University

"For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information (...) -- like a digital computer," said Spivey. "More recently, however, a growing number of studies, such as ours, support dynamical-systems approaches to the mind. In this model, perception and cognition are mathematically described as a continuous trajectory through a high-dimensional mental space; the neural activation patterns flow back and forth to produce nonlinear, self-organized, emergent properties -- like a biological organism."

Excerpts: As a result, the field evolved into camps of specialists fighting to advance one theory of learning over another. Meanwhile, neuroscientists were holed up in their labs testing the ability of new imaging tools to deliver clues about which areas of the brain are involved in key aspects of learning. In another intellectual ghetto, computer scientists were busy using neural networks and fancy algorithms to model learning. Pity the poor teachers who were left trying to make sense of it all, barraged with brain-based pseudo-theories with no credible basis.

Excerpts: A good night's sleep triggers changes in the brain that help to improve memory, according to a new study (...) might help to explain why children -- infants, in particular -- require much more sleep than adults, and also suggest a role for sleep in the rehabilitation of stroke patients and other individuals who have suffered brain injuries. "Our previous studies demonstrated that a period of sleep could help people improve their performance of 'memory tasks,' such as playing piano scales, (...) But we didn't know exactly how or why this was happening. (...)"

UP WITH THE BABY. An orca-whale mother and her newborn pup may forgo sleep for several weeks before adopting a normal pattern. Dolphins also exhibit this behavior. SeaWorld, San Diego

Orca-whale and dolphin mothers and their newborns appear not to sleep for a month after the pups' birth, researchers report. Neither parent nor offspring shows any ill effects from the long waking stint, and the animals don't later compensate with extra sleep.

No previously studied mammal stays awake for so long, says Jerry Siegel of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), an investigator in the study.

Excerpts: On one level, cells are indivisible things; on another they dissolve into a frenzied, self-organizing dance of smaller components. (...)

The validity of cell doctrine depends on the scale at which the body is observed. To limit ourselves to the perspective of this model may mean that explications of some bodily phenomena remain outside the capacity of modern biology. It is perhaps time to dethrone the doctrine of the cell, to allow alternative models of the body for study and exploitation in this new, post-modern era of biological investigation.

Excerpts: How can cells deform yet maintain optimal function? Probing the similarities in the properties of a cell's network of structural filaments, and those of soft glassy materials, may help in tackling this question.

Excerpts: White blood cells help our bodies fight infection by killing harmful bacteria. Now researchers have discovered how these cells turn their weapons on and off. The findings may give doctors a powerful new tool for boosting a patient's immune system.

White blood cells have a high-stress job. Infected tissues teem with dangerous bacteria that drive down oxygen levels by destroying surrounding blood vessels. When the cells reach the bacteria, they attack them with antimicrobial compounds like nitric oxide and cathelicidins--proteins that poke holes in bacterial membranes.

Excerpts: Are current cancer drugs targeted at the wrong kinds of cells? A pioneering approach to the development of treatments uses a mathematical model to follow how different types of tumour cells respond to therapy.

Excerpts: In an ant species ¡X or is it two species? ¡X females are produced only by females and males only by males. Explanations of this revelation have to invoke some decidedly offbeat patterns of natural selection.

Excerpts: Simple rules of balance and energetics govern the stability of both arch and Jenga structures, but unlike an arch, a Jenga structure is constantly changing, with additions and deletions of stones, and its stability at any moment depends on the importance of a given ingoing or outgoing stone's contribution to the structure. By realizing that dynamics are key to understanding complex structures, we can see stable food webs not as static entities, but as open and flexible Jenga-like systems that can change in species attributes, composition, and dynamics.

Excerpts: A primitive reef in a desert pool? That's just one of many surprises lurking in this arid part of Coahuila state in northern Mexico. (...) Fed by underground waters coursing through the mountains' limestone layers and caves, as well as gushing up from deep and ancient aquifers, the pools (...) have strange chemistries. Phosphorus tends to be in short supply, whereas calcium, magnesium and sulphur are richly available. In essence, the pozas appear to be little versions of the primordial sea, before the dawn of nucleated cells.

Excerpts: In many parts of the world, landscapes are turning into isolated fragments of habitat. Conservation biologists and land managers often try to link these patches via connecting strips of habitat that, in theory, give animals better access to food and mates. But testing whether, and how, these so-called corridors work has been difficult.

(...) describes the largest replicated, controlled study of corridor efficacy and reports that bluebirds prefer to travel along the edges of these habitat connectors.

It's bad enough that some rhesus monkey mothers regularly kick, hit, bite, and otherwise brutalize their babies. But to make things worse, females exposed to such abuse as infants often grow up to become abusive parents themselves, perpetuating a primate cycle of family violence, a new study finds.

Being abused as an infant outweighs any primarily genetic trait, such as an anxious temperament, in fostering abusive parenting by female monkeys, says primatologist Dario Maestripieri of the University of Chicago.

Excerpts: When a drop of liquid plummets onto a surface, the result is a splash ¡X but not it seems if the process occurs at reduced atmospheric pressure. Here, perhaps, is a way to tune splash behaviour for practical ends.

Excerpts: An unsteady ocean conveyor delivering heat to the far North Atlantic has been abetting everything from rising temperatures to surging hurricanes, but look for a turnaround soon

Benjamin Franklin knew about the warm Gulf Stream that flows north and east off the North American coast, ferrying more than a petawatt of heating power to the chilly far North Atlantic. But he could have had little inkling of the role that this ponderous ocean circulation has had in the climatic vicissitudes of the greater Atlantic region and even the globe.

Excerpts: What if the big bang never happened? Ask cosmologists this and they'll usually tell you it is a stupid question. The evidence, after all, is written in the heavens. (...)

Or are they? A small band of researchers is starting to ask the question no one is supposed to ask. Last week the dissidents met to review the evidence at the first ever Crisis in Cosmology conference in Mon??o, Portugal. There they argued that cosmologists' most cherished theory of the universe fails to explain certain crucial observations.

Excerpts: Saturn's vast and majestic ring system has its own atmosphere - separate from that of the planet itself, according to data from the Cassini spacecraft. And Saturn is rotating seven minutes more slowly than when probes measured its spin in the 70s and 80s - an observation experts cannot yet explain. (...)

By making close flybys of the ring system, Cassini has been able to determine that the atmosphere around the rings is composed principally of molecular oxygen (O2).(...)

"As water comes off the rings, the hydrogen is lost from it, leaving the oxygen," (...).

Excerpts: For more than a century, dust and aerosols in the atmosphere have been blocking some of the Sun's radiation, shielding us from the worst effects of global warming. The question has always been: how much? Now, as cuts in pollution allow the skies to clear, an attempt to quantify the effect on future temperatures has produced an alarming conclusion.

Complex Challenges: Global Terroist Networks

Excerpts: Almost four years after hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center, Islamic NGOs are still battling suspicions that they are fronts for terrorists, but realise they have a long way to go to meet the professional standards of the mainstream international humanitarian community.

In response to these concerns, British charity Islamic Relief is spearheading a drive to set up a new body aimed at helping Muslim aid agencies become more professional and make their accounts transparent, while building links with non-Islamic humanitarian organisations.

Commentary: Seeking clues to the man who's everywhere at once in Iraq, committing every sort of mayhem. A remarkable proportion of the violence taking place in Iraq is regularly credited to the Jordanian Ahmad al-Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his organization Al Qaeda in Iraq. (?) Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him, lifting his reputed feats of terrorism to epic, even mythic, proportions (much aided by various mainstream media outlets).

Monkeys Keep Track Of Small Numbers, 05/07/02, Science News, Monkeys show signs of knowing when the number of faces that they see matches the number of voices that they hear, leading a research team to conclude that these primates possess basic counting skills.

Sleepy Teens Haven't Got Circadian Rhythm, 05/07/02, Science News, High schools that begin classes as early as 7:30 a.m. deprive teenagers of sleep, and attempts to reset an adolescent's biological clock fail to solve the problem.